Download or read book Frederick Ashton s Ballets written by Geraldine Morris and published by Dance Books Limited. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this ground-breaking study of style in six ballets by Sir Frederick Ashton, Geraldine Morris examines the contribution they have made to twentieth century dance and art. Central to the discussion are questions about performance and its connection with style. What do we mean by style in dance? How do we identify it? How can it be retained? Can choreographed movement be distinguished from the danse d'ecole? Does any of this matter? Having considered the nature of style and its relationship to early twentieth century training in Britain, Morris goes on to discuss the six works: A Wedding Bouquet, Illuminations, Birthday Offering, Jazz Calendar, Daphnis and Chloe and A Month in the Country. Delivered with verve and enthusiasm, her analysis and examination of Ashton's role, together with that of the dancers, designers, writers and musicians, is both innovative and thought-provoking. The book is intended for dancers, students and dance enthusiasts who have enjoyed these great works and wish to understand them more fully. Having danced with the Royal Ballet during the years when Ashton was the company's Director, the author brings inside knowledge, informed and enlivened by years of studying the dances. The result is exhilarating and enlightening but also controversial. Geraldine Morris is a Senior Lecturer in Dance Studies at the University of Roehampton.

Download or read book Frederick Ashton and His Ballets written by David Vaughan and published by Alfred A. Knopf. This book was released on 1977 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Secret Muses written by Julie Kavanagh and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 675 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biography of the choreographer Frederick Ashton which traces his progress from Peruvian childhood and unhappy schooldays, through initiation into a homosexual artistic coterie, to a varied career in dance, culminating in public and royal acclaim.

Download or read book Frederick Ashton and His Ballets written by Clive Barnes and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Frederick Ashton written by Cristina Franchi and published by Oberon Books. This book was released on 2005-04-01 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2004 marks the centenary of the birth of Frederick Ashton, Founder Choreographer of The Royal Ballet, whose work defined the English style of ballet. Inspired to dance by Anna Pavlova, encouraged by Ninette de Valois (Founder of the Royal Ballet), Ashton's career as dancer, choreographer and director, spans the Company's history from its earliest days. His influence is still seen today in the repertory and style that informs the Company, with ballets such as La Fille mal gardée, Ondine and Façade. This is the first of a series of books in the Royal Opera House Heritage Series, featuring a unique collection of images from the Royal Opera House Archives. The Series celebrates some of the legendary figures from the world of ballet and opera who have been associated with the Royal Opera House and its resident Companies, The Royal Ballet and The Royal Opera.

Download or read book Apollo s Angels written by Jennifer Homans and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-11-02 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, LOS ANGELES TIMES, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY For more than four hundred years, the art of ballet has stood at the center of Western civilization. Its traditions serve as a record of our past. Lavishly illustrated and beautifully told, Apollo’s Angels—the first cultural history of ballet ever written—is a groundbreaking work. From ballet’s origins in the Renaissance and the codification of its basic steps and positions under France’s Louis XIV (himself an avid dancer), the art form wound its way through the courts of Europe, from Paris and Milan to Vienna and St. Petersburg. In the twentieth century, émigré dancers taught their art to a generation in the United States and in Western Europe, setting off a new and radical transformation of dance. Jennifer Homans, a historian, critic, and former professional ballerina, wields a knowledge of dance born of dedicated practice. Her admiration and love for the ballet, as Entertainment Weekly notes, brings “a dancer’s grace and sure-footed agility to the page.”

Download or read book Frederick Ashton written by Zoë Dominic and published by London : Harrap. This book was released on 1971 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Secret Muses written by Julie Kavanagh and published by . This book was released on 2004-09-02 with total page 675 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sir Frederick Ashton, Britain's greatest choreographer, was a major figure on the cultural landscape of the twentieth century and his influence extended far beyond the world of dance. Julie Kavanagh traces Ashton's progress with a keen and sympathetic sense of both the man and his milieu. The drama of his professional and private life - among his close associates were Constant Lambert, Benjamin Britten, W. B. Yeats, the Sitwells and Cecil Beaton - is skilfully interwoven with vivid descriptions of the ballets themselves. 'Not only the best biography of a ballet figure but, far more important, a Proustian recollection of that glamorous near-mythical time, the first half of our now setting century.' Gore Vidal

Download or read book Romeo and Juliet written by London Festival Ballet and published by . This book was released on 1987* with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Following Sir Fred s Steps written by Stephanie Jordan and published by Dance Books Limited. This book was released on 1996 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following Sir Fred's Steps is an insightful and wide-ranging look at the rich legacy of Sir Frederick Ashton (1904-1988), one of the great choreographers of the twentieth century.

Download or read book Frederick Ashton written by and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Three contrasting ballets by The Royal Ballet's Founder Choreographer Frederick Ashton: The Dream (1964) is an enchanting adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream to music by Mendelssohn. Symphonic Variations (1946) is an early Ashton masterpiece, and a breathtaking, abstract work on the beauty of pure movement. Marguerite and Armand (1963), here danced by former Royal Ballet Principal Zenaida Yanowsky and Guest Artist Roberto Bolle, is a tragic love story of great lyric beauty. The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House is conducted by Emmanuel Plasson." -- Container.

Download or read book A month in the country written by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev and published by Samuel French, Inc.. This book was released on 2009-04 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bored wife living in the Russian countryside falls in love with her little boy's handsome new tutor, just like all of the women in the household. The wife's chief rival turns out to be her 17 year old ward; they make a wonderful portrait of two different women in love.

Download or read book Classicism and Romanticism in Three Ballets by Frederick Ashton written by Steven Ha (Ph. D. in dance studies) and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Classicism and Romanticism in Three Ballets by Frederick Ashton" examines three ballets by the twentieth-century British choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton (1904–1988). I tease apart elements of the aesthetic theories of classicism and romanticism as they manifest in Ashton's choreography and consider how those aesthetic ideologies relate to representations of gender in performance. I present three case studies from different periods in Ashton's career: Les Illuminations (1950), The Dream (1964), and Rhapsody (1980). In choosing a selection of ballets across Ashton's oeuvre, my analysis identifies the strains of romanticism that are crucial to deciphering meaning in each work individually and elucidates the continuous undercurrent of romanticism that challenge conventions of classical ballet. I consider Ashton's relationship to the art form's approach to gender and its emphasis of sexual difference through the heterosexual pas de deux, athleticism of male dancers, and perceptions of ballerinas as muses. I demonstrate how Ashton’s ballets subtly reject these conventions. I then situate each ballet in its historical moment, to further explicate how the ballets’ engagements with discourses of gender in dance also refract concomitant sociopolitical circumstances relating to gender and sexuality. I ground each examination in the dance itself and employ choreographic analysis to substantiate the various claims about romanticism/classicism and gender in each ballet; my examination is further supported by scholarship and archival research in the form of critical reviews and personal accounts from the artists involved. Given the differences in era and context of each ballet, each chapter brings into focus a different set of frameworks for analysis. In the chapter on Rhapsody, I consider notions of virtuosity as they relate to gendered norms and the ballet’s reversal of roles in gendering the artist as male and the muse as female. In terms of The Dream, I examine the male fairy body of Oberon and the dynamics of power in a matriarchal society led by Titania and consider their echoes of Victorian ideals of gender and marriage. Lastly, in examining Les Illuminations, I identify the influence of British romanticism to ascertain the ballet's opposition to dualistic structures such as the Apollonian/Dionysian, and I further speculate on the choreography's political dimensions as a performance of protest by the dancer Nicholas Magallanes, against a backdrop of the Lavender Scare and racism against migrant workers in the mid-twentieth century in the United States. I argue that Ashton’s ballets exemplify a notion of romantic ballet that acknowledges the sustained influence of nineteenth-century romanticism but resists the nineteenth-century periodization of the "romantic ballet.” This dissertation research thus contributes to scholarship that interrogates labels such as “romantic” and suggests the term’s applicability to twentieth-century works in order to emphasize the complexities of a single work of art. Additionally, in choosing Ashton’s ballets as the focus of this study, I bring scholarly attention to a choreographer who is underrepresented in the field of dance studies.

Download or read book Balanchine Variations written by Nancy Goldner and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The literature on Balanchine is vast, but it is primarily biographical. Balanchine Variations is the first book to concentrate on the ballets themselves, providing critical analysis and detailed descriptions of what the dancers actually do. Beginning with Apollo (1928), Balanchine's first extant work, and ending with one of his last ballets, Ballo della Regina (1978), Nancy Goldner offers detailed insights into more than twenty individual ballets. Based on lectures given across the United States, under the auspices of the Balanchine Foundation, they are intended to illuminate his art. Goldner discusses the history of each ballet, places each in the context of Balanchine's life and sensibility. She also addresses his taste in music and whether his style can be considered particularly American. The ballets Balanchine choreographed for the New York City Ballet are danced by companies around the world, and this innovative book is sure to become an indispensable guide to dancers and spectators alike.

Download or read book Marius Petipa written by Nadine Meisner and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019-06-03 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most important ballet choreographers of all time, Marius Petipa (1818 - 1910) created works that are now mainstays of the ballet repertoire. Every day, in cities around the world, performances of Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty draw large audiences to theatres and inspire new generations of dancers, as does The Nutcracker during the winter holidays. These are his best-known works, but others - Don Quixote, La Bayadère - have also become popular, even canonical components of the classical repertoire, and together they have shaped the defining style of twentieth-century ballet. The first biography in English of this monumental figure of ballet history, Marius Petipa: The Emperor's Ballet Master covers the choreographer's life and work in full within the context of remarkable historical and political surroundings. Over the course of ten well-researched chapters, Nadine Meisner explores Marius Petipa's life and legacy: the artist's arrival in Russia from his native France, the socio-political tensions and revolution he experienced, his popularity on the Russian imperial stage, his collaborations with other choreographers and composers (most famously Tchaikovsky), and the conditions under which he worked, in close proximity to the imperial court. Meisner presents a thrilling and exhaustive narrative not only of Petipa's life but of the cultural development of ballet across the 19th and early 20th centuries. The book also extends beyond Petipa's narrative with insightful analyses of the evolution of ballet technique, theatre genres, and the rise of male dancers. Richly illustrated with archival photographs, this book unearths original material from Petipa's 63 years in Russia, much of it never published in English before. As Meisner demonstrates, the choreographer laid the foundations for Soviet ballet and for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, the expatriate company which exercised such an enormous influence on ballet in the West, including the Royal Ballet and Balanchine's New York City Ballet. After Petipa, Western ballet would never be the same.

Download or read book Sylvia written by Léo Delibes and published by Alfred Music. This book was released on 1996-02-01 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A ballet in three acts and four scenes by Léo Delibes.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet written by Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 1013 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Nearly four hundred and fifty years in, ballet still resonates-though the stages have become international, and the dancers, athletes far removed from noble amateurs. While vibrations from the form's beginnings clearly resound, much has transformed. Nowadays ballet dancers aspire to work across disciplines with choreographers who value a myriad of abilities. Dance theorists and historians make known possibilities and polemics in lieu of notating dances verbatim, and critics do the daily work of recording performance histories and interviewing artists. Ideas circulate, questions arise, and discussions about how to resist ballet's outmoded traditions take precedence. In the dance community, calls for innovation have defined palpable shifts in ballet's direction and resultantly we have arrived at a new moment in its history that is unquestionably recognized as a genre onto its own: Contemporary Ballet. An aspect of this recent discipline is that its dancemakers, more often than not, seek to reorient the viewer by celebrating what could be deemed vulnerabilities, re-construing ideals of perfection, problematizing the marginalized/mainstream dichotomy, bringing audiences closer in to observe, and letting the art become an experience rather than a distant object preciously guarded out of reach. Hence, the practice of ballet is moving to become a less-mediated and more active process in many circumstances. Performers and audiences alike are challenged, and while convention is still omnipresent, choices are being made. For some, this approach has been drawn on for decades, and for others it signifies a changing of the guard, yet however we arrive there, the conclusion is the same: Contemporary Ballet is not a style. That is to say, it is not a trend, phase, or fashionable term that will fade, rather it is a clear period in ballet's time deserved of investigation. And it is into this moment that we enter"--